Predicting dissolved organic carbon concentration in a dynamic salt marsh creek via machine learning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a master variable in aquatic systems. Resolving DOC dynamics requires high‐temporal resolution data. However, DOC concentration cannot be directly measured in situ, and discrete sample collection and analysis becomes expensive as temporal resolution increases. To surmount this problem, an option is to predict site‐specific DOC concentration with linear modeling and optical data predictors collected from high‐cost, high‐maintenance in situ spectrophotometers. This study sought to improve upon the accuracy and field costs of linear predictive DOC methods by using machine learning modeling coupled to low‐to‐zero cost predictors. To do this, we collected 16 months of in situ data (e.g., spectrophotometer attenuation, salinity, temperature), assembled freely available predictors (e.g., point in year, rainfall), and collected samples for DOC analysis, all in a salt marsh creek. At seasonal timescales, machine learning (coefficient of determination [ R 2 ] = 0.90) modestly improved upon the accuracy of linear methods ( R 2 = 0.80) but offered substantial instrumentation cost reductions (~ 90%) by requiring only cost‐free predictors (online data) or cost‐free predictors paired with low‐cost in situ predictors (temperature, salinity, depth). At intertidal timescales, linear methods proved ill‐equipped to predict DOC concentration compared to machine learning, and again, machine learning offered a substantial instrumentation cost reduction (~ 90%). Although our models were developed for and applicable to a single site, the use of machine learning with low‐to‐zero cost predictors provides a blueprint for others trying to model DOC dynamics and other analytes in any complex aquatic system.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".